Uncharted 2 Dominates AIAS Awards

Naughty Dog's critically-acclaimed action adventure has scooped up 10 awards at the annual AIAS Award ceremony in Las Vegas, including Outstanding Achievement in Animation, Visual Engineering, Art Direction and the coveted Game of the Year award. This isn't surprising, since it was by far and away the best PS3 game of 2009 as well as being one of the highest-scoring video games of all time (according to Metacritic and Gamerankings).

Batman: Arkham Asylum and Scribblenauts were also honoured with multiple awards, and all three titles have also been nominated for BAFTAs. Better make sure that there's plenty of space on the mantelpiece, guys![Guardian.co.uk]

Gearbox CEO Hits Back at Industry Analysts

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford loves running his mouth. Taking some time out from his hectic schedule of picking fights with Valve, Pitchford has criticised the Wedbush Morgan analysts that predicted that Borderlands would be "sent to die" by competing with Halo 3 ODST and CoD MW2. In an interview with Gamersutra, he stated:

"We were sandwiched between the two biggest first-person shooter franchises ever, and the guys at BioWare, who walk on water, were releasing Dragon Age around the same time."

"You know what, Mike? I knew you were wrong."

The 'Mike' in question is Michael Pachter, the controversial and outspoken industry analyst who famously forecast that Borderlands was doomed to fail. Luckily for Randy, the addictive FPS gained huge popularity; selling over 3 million units and becoming the best selling original IP of 2009. It'll be interesting to see whether the stubborn analyst may have met his match in the tenacious Gearbox CEO- or if there'll be some serious smack talk to come!

Sony Patents Universal Controller

Sony has filed a patent for a universal controller that will be compatible with "the PlayStation, a controller made by Nintendo, Xbox game controllers made by Microsoft, Amiga CD-32 controllers, Atari Jaguar controllers, Gravis Gamepad controllers, Sega controllers, and Turbographics controllers."

This controller will feature an LCD screen that allows its buttons to be mapped to several control configurations, as well as an alphanumeric keyboard. It will also be backwards-compatible with older consoles (which will appeal to retro gamers who may have lost or damaged their older peripherals). Depending on the price, this new peripheral could become a ubiquitous part of every gamer's arsenal- and will make local multiplayer gaming sessions a lot easier to organise. [US Patent Office]